Three laughs: Crazy World

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart. 


Three laughs case file #25:
Crazy World (Ani Mulalu? - Crazy World), Uganda 2019
Director: Nabwana I.G.G.

Times are tough and what the world needs now is some mirth and laughter. A gathering of the world's most prestigious film festivals are currently having a streaming festival called We Are One. Most of the festival's programme doesn't exactly capture my fancy, execpt when I noticed that Toronto International Film Festival has presented us a new "supa action" movie straight outta Wakaliwood, Uganda. It was Crazy World Time!

Now, one might need a bit of background of these films. In the poor village of Wakali a group of local filmmakers have taken it to themselves to create movies with what they have. Thus these movies put on screen every villager from small kids to elders, and have some very creative solutions in terms of technics. They never take themselves too seriously, as every movie also includes a VJ, a video joker, making fun of characters and scenes as a running commentary. That's also how one doesn't feel like laughing at people living in the 3rd world, but rather, sharing a joke with some people from a totally different background. It's no wonder Wakaliwood has found fans all over the world.

I'd also like to add that the films keep also getting more inventive and have some clever in-joking as well. The 4th wall is blown up in gags so inspiring, they remind me of the ending of Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles. The first worldwide sensation was Who Killed Captain Alex?, then came Bad Black and now Crazy World. Each of these movies also touches upon more serious aspects of life in Uganda, including militarization, organized crime and kidnappings. But these ideas are more made fun of and thus also laughed at the poor image Uganda may have in western eyes. It's not hard to fall in love with Wakali with its sense of community and love for filmmaking after viewing these.

Three laughs (SPOILERS)

1. The star of this film is Isaac Newton Kizito, as noted by the VJ, the son of the director. Together with some other small kids they form Wakas Stars United! In the film's plot, they are kidnapped children plotting for their escape from the Tiger Mafia. But this plot is only needed to showcase the kids throwing kung fu kids at gun-toting adults. It is clear they are having the time of their lives.

2. There's an anti-piracy PSA in the middle of the movie. In a radar they notice that someone somewhere is pirating the film, and thus they send out the robotic Piracy Hunter to capture them. After some bloody inserts of Piracy Hunter getting rid of fans out in Canada and Paris, it turns out that the culprit is actually the film's director himself, showing his creation to his family. Piracy Hunter doesn't feel any remorse, though.

3. In one scene a gangster discovers that the big wad of money is only colored from the other side. The VJ gives a memorable one-liner to this: "See kids, adults, too, can be stupid."

Three laughs: Double Down

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watvh them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.


Three laughs case #15:
Double Down (2005)
Director: Neil Breen

It's about time to get to the filmography of one Neil Breen. Double Down may not be his best movie, but it is the first, so let's begin there. Breen began as an architect and a real-estate agent, but he had aspirations for a movie career. Nowadays he is a director, actor, writer, editor and a producer with a sizable internet following.

The reason for this is because his style is so unmistakable. Breen is both akin to Tommy Wiseau in his delusions of grandeur and acting style, and somehow totally unpredictable and weird, no matter how many movies he makes. He  likes thriller movies with little suspense and big stakes that are informed to the viewer mostly through dialogue or voice-over over some stock footage. Usually, Breen is out to save the world with his hidden knowledge, superior hacking skills and/or magic powers from evil and shady military, medical or financial institutions.

While all of Breen's films have been made on a pittance, here he basically doesn't even have money to any other actors save for a few cameos. A lot of the fun of Double Down is the ingenuity of getting past this fact. Breen is a former government agent and hacker, who has ran away from his former masters because they killed his fiancée for some reason. Hiding out, he threatens the world with hidden biological weapons he has hidden in several cities and that he will kill hundreds of thousands of people if not left alone. Somehow, the film twists this premise so that he's the hero?

Logic is not big in these films, even though Breen likes to repeat lines and themes over and over again.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. Breen's unenthusiastic line-reading is a thing to behold, it's like a parody of Steven Seagal done by Bob Odenkirk in a weird wig. Thus it's preposterous how he keeps finding even worse actors than himself. This film has plenty of flashbacks and so we are also treated to the scene where Breen's wife got killed in a pool. And boy, is she atrocious an actor. Even lines like YES! seem worse presented than in the cheapest porn you can find, no matter lines like "I can't wait to be your wife!" After this, she is shot by a sniper (though there's no wound on her back) and left to float on her face in the pool as Breen cries to some bloody orchids.

2. Between stock footage and Breen talking to powerful people with some dubious connections, every once in a while we have a scene with him either hacking on the laptops in his car, or killing an intruder. One of my favorites is when he announces, playground-style, that his desert base is protected by an invisible barrier. We then see a soldier walk awkwardly with an assault rifle. He suddenly falls down dead with blood in his ears.

3. There's a lengthy scene of Breen climbing a rock formation on the desert. The camera pans to show four AK-47's resting to a rock. Breen blurts out "Sorry to interrupt your lunch" and blasts away with his handgun with arcade machine sound effects and with blood sputtering to his face. It seems the scene means he managed to catch four mercenaries out to get him off-guard, yet without ever having one image of any of the would-be attackers. Avantgarde!

The New Batch Revisited

Fed up with Hollywood right now? I know I am. And I know another who most certainly was in 1990: Joe Dante. So, what better time to join us all together for the first installment of a new recurring series in this blog. The Revisited takes a look at a cult movie I've already seen multiple times and picks out the elements that make it work so good. The series also takes a look on how the movie holds up today. The best way to begin this series is to take a look at one of the most unusual, and best, movie sequels ever made. So here you go: Gremlins 2: The New Batch!

The Face Value

Joe Dante is a director straight outta Roger Corman's stable. He's an exploitation filmmaker that found fame and fortune waiting in Hollywood, mostly thanks to his peers like Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis who had risen in power and were able to produce any kind of films they wanted. With Dante, it was his unique mix of slapstick humor straight from Looney Tunes and Tex Avery cartoons, monsters and set ups from 50's science fiction, and biting satire of the good old', red-bloded mom's apple pie Americana. While such subjects undoubtedly sold in the golden age of Amblin entertainment and VHS horror films, studios tended to not quite get Dante's unique visions. One of his better-fared, however, was the anarchic Christmas tale of 1984: Gremlins.

The movie the director himself calls "The Muppet Show on Acid" showed another side to the kind of cute and cuddly plush toy critters the public of the 80's was lapping up. It's also a parody of Christmas movies, what with magic being brought to a small town consequently wrecks everybody's lives rather than brings them together. Dante clearly had a lot of fun with cartoon violence and havoc wrecking little monsters but he felt that the entire story was there. But studio execs had another idea. Ironically, the movie set to destroy the idyllic image and the cutesy feel-good everyone was selling, turned out to be a profitable machine in its own right.

Since Dante didn't want to do a sequel, the producers searched around. No one was eager to follow Dante's footsteps, and Spielberg stuck to his friend's side. So, finally the negotiations got Dante back, but also gave him more free hands to play around with the concept. As it happened, Dante had already planned to do a satire of movie sequels and how useless they are at core. The director's idea was to wreck the entire franchise to the ground before the studio could find someone to direct Gremlins 3. And he was about to have the time of his life doing it.

The Plot

The old Chinatown block where Mr. Wing (Keye Luke) keeps shop is set to be demolished in way of a hyper modern office block built by businessman Daniel Clamp (John Glover). While Wing opposes, his health is in a bad condition, and the property passes on as he dies. After that, his pet mogwai Gizmo runs away from home. He gets captured by the scientists Martin & Martin who bring him to their lab. But Gizmo manages to escape again before they find out that mogwais breed by getting them wet.

Meanwhile, Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan) has moved into New York with his girlfriend Kate Beringer (Phoebe Cates) to build a career as an illustrator in Clamp's company. He founds the wandering Gizmo in the building and promises to keep him safe. But of course a freak accident gets the mogwai to breed and soon there's a whole new batch of Gremlins growing. They make a mess of Clamp's building first, and then plan to take over the whole of New York.

The Contents

The characters of the film are quite wise to how the whole ordeal is going down, going from rememberance of the first film to a whole new meta-level of consciousness. The scene where John Astin's clumsy janitor fixes a water fountain with Gizmo attempting to dodge the spraying water is played out purely for laughs. Likewise Dante makes fun of the two other rules. The characters get into an argument of the vagueness of the eating rule: how soon after midnight can mogwais start eating again without turning into gremlins? Also, gremlins can't be beaten by luring them into the sunshine since it happens to be a rather cloudy day. Plenty of scenes show them in quite bright environments anyway.

No "bright light?"

Most of the film works as a bitter letter to plastic capitalism, with gremlins standing in as ravenous consumers, always wanting more and more. But the thing is, the creatures won't succumb to society's norms and act all meek in front of rich people. They do what they want and have no need for hierarchies. Yuppie bistros, late night cable shows, even Leonard Maltin and his damning movie reviews - all get parodied in a machine gun pace.

The building itself has a lot of places set up for various types of comedy. There's a tv station for media satire, a sci-fi lab for some B-movie shenanigans and a food court for some old-school slapstick. A movie theatre set hosts the most meta joke of the movie, with Hulk Hogan appearing to break the fourth wall in order to stop gremlins from wrecking the movie they're starring in and the audience is watching! Did I mention this movie is really, really awesome?

An interesting character is that of Daniel Clamp, a clear stand in for the likes of Donald Trump and Ted Turner. In the beginning of the film he's played off as a villain, a ruthless magnate who won't allow tradition get in his way of progress. He's always seen through a monitor, video-conferencing from his office rather than to appear in place. Later on, small-time bosses in his building have ridiculously tight standards of appearance that they rule to minute detail.

But when Clamp makes his full appearance, he really isn't such a bad guy. He's a clueless buffoon that doesn't fully realize the consequences of his business decisions, yes. The real villains are his underlings, trying to suck up to the billionaire by trying to please him in the most absurd fashions possible. During the gremlin ordeal, Clamp gets a whiff of the old-timey Americana he had so forgotten, and plenty of his yes-men get their punishments in the forms of various gremlin skits.

The crudest and one of the funniest being saved for last.

As sequels often have more marketability, they usually need a host of new, marketable characters. Dante takes this idea to ridiculous lengths by having a cast of gremlins with various powers and personalities. On the monster side, there are an electric, spider- and bat-gremlin as well as an acid-scarred Phantom Gremlin and the grotesque female gremlin. In accordance there's also a googly-eyed daffy gremlin, a buck-toothed dum-dum gremlin, a Jimmy Cagney-looking gangster gremlin and, most memorably of all, the Brain Gremlin, voiced with an obnoxious Australian upper-class accent by Tony Randall.

In the midst of such a colorful cast, the human actors can't help but to feel like staticians. And that is, even though the actors are awesome. Veterans like Christopher Lee and Robert Prinsky do their outrageous roles with both grace and glee. Dick Miller, a xenophobic and a little racist all-American fruitcake in the first, has transformed into an unlikely action hero for this one. My favorite is still kathleen Freeman's Microwave Marge, a hysterical woman bringing the same kind of layers of camp to this as Una O'Connor did for James Whale's monster movies back in the day. In the nastiest, most vicious blow to the original movie, Dante even undermines its blackest, darkest scene, with Phoebe Cates having a pervertedly tragic reason for hating President's Day as much as she does Christmas.

It's American pop culture and consumerism thrown into a blender and dyed colorful and splashed to screen. Dante evokes the cartoons of old with the same kind of fast-moving never-stopping energy. Which is why it's so apt that the film begins with a short Bugs & Daffy segment animated by none other than Chuck Jones himself. Here's a clear changing of the guards if I ever saw one. It's a shame the studio interfered with Dante's actual Looney Tunes movie so much. That film has several segments good enough to make the viewer wonder if corporate culture cost us another as big a masterpiece in mischief as Gremlins 2 is.

The Legacy

Or: Why the world doesn't need Gremlins 3

Gremlins was a big hit of its time, and there were plenty of films that replicated its formula, such as Critters, Ghoulies, Troll, Hobgoblins and so on. While most of these were aimed at children or pre-teens, Gremlins had an unique nastiness that worked well on adults too, that proved hard to replicate. Seeing it as a child was actually as exciting as watching a grown-ups horror film. And there are so many pop-culture riffs and spoofs, it's impossible for children to catch them all. I only got the Public Enemy -referencing grapefruit squeeze the last time I watched it, and I've probably seen the movie 10 times.

While Gremlins 2 doesn't have as many horror elements as its predecessor (save perhaps the scene with Spider-Gremlin), it did everything else bigger and bolder. And inexplicably, fell short on the earnings. Perhaps it was due to audience's tastes having modified. Joe Dante himself believes he waited too long after the first movie. Nevertheless, that fact served Dante's ultimate goal of preventing further sequels. Nevertheless, the auteur has now and then toyed with the idea of doing another, simply because, well, the director hasn't had the kind of freedom in his work since.

But having celebrity cameos and broadening the scope just wouldn't work any more. The reason is because there eventually was a bigger film, Tim Burton's underrated 1996 film Mars Attacks! The movie plays out much like Gremlins would if they had access to ray-guns and flying saucers. Mars also takes a step further into mean-spiritedness. While the body count in Gremlins 2 is relatively low, Burton gleefully executes celebrities by the hoardes. His offs include A-listers such as Michael J. Fox, Danny DeVito, Pierce Brosnan, Glenn Close, Martin Short, and Jack Nicholson twice! Burton also plays out with an all-you-can-eat buffet of disposable plastic pop culture relics, and has silly cameos from such unlikely sources as Pam Grier, Paul Winfield, Christina Applegate and Tom Jones.

Since Mars Attacks! still isn't quite as good as either Gremlins movie, I'm thinking the most important thing is that Gremlins are hand-crafted works of love. Mars Attacks! is "just" a silly little catastrophy movie parody and a cartoon movie with plenty of now-shoddy mid-90s computer effects. At best, that's what any new version would be, since Hollywood execs think computer effects are the only way to go now. While that could bring an impressive Gremlin army to the screen, it wouldn't have the same soul.

They should rather remake Critters.

HIFF 2012: Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

Not that it matters much, but I'll try to pick up on Love & Anarchy reporting for this year. After all, I'm not even halfway through all the films I saw in there. But no matter, plenty of them were good enough to digest for a while and to report through a longer stretch of a time allows for a deeper look into them. This post focuses on the films that lingered on somewhere between reality ond pure fantasy, whatever that may mean.

Beasts of the Southern Wild (USA)
Director: Benh Zeitlin

This year's Love & Anarchy opening film gathered a lot of buzz at Cannes this year, and was praised from Earth to Heaven. With such an overkill on praise, it's easy to be disappointed in the end result. It's a very good film and more than suitable for the choice of opening film of the festival. But while it was praised for being a wholly original piece of filmmaking, it's more or less the same story as Terry Gilliam's Tideland had a few years back, albeit with with more grace and with subtler mentally handicapped people.

In a fictional Deep Southern village of Washtub, lives the six-year-old Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) in a run-down shack. Her mother has long since left so she attempts to bond with her father Wink (Dwight Henry). Unfortunately, Wink has severe mental and heath problems, and isn't too happy about them and is prone to bursts of anger. Hushpuppy has learned to more or less take care of herself, with the help of the other villagers. Hushpuppy has an active imagination and gets lost inside it from time to time. When a tornado threatens the village, Wink and Hushpuppy rekindle their relationship, but the desperate situation also calls for desperate acts. Hushpuppy also ventures on an adventure to find her mother.

The film is visually very inventive, with some amazing sets that look like they've been lying around for years having actually been created from scratch. The overwhelming flood of striking imagery makes the viewer feel like a six-year-old him- or herself, being amazed of the vastness of the world and all the things in it. That's probably why the film had such a strong response.

But this in turn also brings with it a sense of helplessness. We can't do anything to hold Hushpuppy's family together, or even to make her act sensibly to grow up to be a proper adult in time. Basically the characters are archetypes, but have enough flaws within them to make them somewhat well-rounded and interesting. The main problem however, seems to be that it throws so many things in the air and quickly ties up the knots at the end. For instance, there isn't enough on he community and it's coping by the end, although it seemed like a major element in the beginning.

But nevertheless, for a first-time director, Benh Zeitlin has created an amazingly confident piece of work. It has been helping that the director and the crew form a strong creative collective that have supported each other with their decisions and visions. I'm looking forward on what this group creates next.

★★★ 1/2

Love or Anarchy: Mostly Love, but with a big dose of Anarchy thrown in for good measure

Chicken with Plums (Poulet aux prunes, France/Germany/Belgium)
Directors: Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Paronnaud

This film was first screened at Espoo Ciné, and after Love & Anarchy it was chosen as Film theater Orion's Movie of the month, so there have been plenty of times to see Marjane Satrapi's adaptation of her own comic book. I'm a bit ashamed I haven't read the comic this is based on, although even the film version is unmistakably of the comic artist's signature style.

The film tells the story of the final days of the famed violinist Nasser Ali Khan (Mathieu Amalric).  He decides to die when he can't find pleasure in life any more. Initially, it appears that his reasons are purely due to him hating his family and his displeasure of getting a new violin after his old one is destroyed. But cut scenes to the future, to the past and to Iran's mysterious legends reveal new sides to Ali's character and his story.

The film opens a bit slowly, but once it gets going it grows on the viewer more and more. It's easy to symphatize with Nasser Ali, since he hates his own obnoxious kids. This is basically a romantic film masqueraded as a fairy tale. For all the imaginary characters, basically this is a story about a broken heart and an unrequited love, much in the same way as, say The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Since I'm a totally cynical bastard, this is the sort of romance I like.  The little comic touches and segments are just the plums to sweeten the already tasty dish of chicken.The film sells itself well as unpredictable and a little anarchistic in that most anything can happen at any given time.

There are several cool animated sequences thrown in for good measure.

The hilarious parody of American sitcoms is of course the easiest possible target, alike to shooting fish in the barrel, but it still made me laugh to my tears. The mythological side is also well-realized, with a suitably mixed style of comic book art and reality. The most memorable of these scenes is wonderful Angel of Death, Azraël, played with curiosity and mellowness by Edouard Baer. But make no mistake, this is Amalric's time to shine. At times, it feels like he's in every French film made these days, but watching his subtle performance here, one can't help but to admire the sheer skill and nuance he brings to his best performances.

★★★ 1/2

Love or Anarchy: 50-50 on this.

Holy Motors (France/Germany)
Director: Leos Carax

Cranky old French auteur Carax has crawled back from the sewer he has dwelled for at least four years (it's been 13 years since his last feature film). And his new film has created a lot of buzz, for it is something not often seen. A purely art house film consisting of mostly sketches and sequences with only a very loose thread tying them together. It does seem the director would be more comfortable with short films and segments in anthology films today.

Stating the plot of Holy Motors is to do an interpretation of sorts, so here's how I see it. Monsieur Oscar (Denis Levant) is a prolific, rich man going to work on a limo one day. His job requires him to wear masks and make up and to do odd tasks around Paris. His first job requires him to dress up as a beggar, and his second as a degenerate sewer-dweller, eating flowers at a graveyard, and to disrupt a fashion photo shoot. He kidnaps the model (Eva Mendés) and takes her to his lair in the sewers.

She'll sing a lullaby to him.

But he still hasn't lost it and is soon back to business. We begin to get the hang of what's going on as he does movements in a motion capture suit, and proceeds to have sex with a woman walking in in a similar suit. Riding inside the limo, it is revealed that invisible cameras are following him around the day. His jobs get more and more intensive, and he is, for instance, required to brutally murder a few people. Truth and fiction are at all times hard to separate, even when M. Oscar goes to pick up his daughter at a friend's party. Finally, he settles home with a bunch of chimpanzees. But what does his limo think about all of this?

Carax is commenting on the state of cinema today, looking for a realistic digital shooting style, while aiming for more and more extreme situations and preposterous stories. Every time the audience is able to grasp an even small strand of plot, Carax destroys it by reminding we are watching a movie. This bitter love letter is at times hysterically funny, but it gets repetitive and pretentious towards the end. There's no good reason half an hour couldn't be trimmed from this.

It's basically a development of some of the ideas Carax has already done. For instance, the monsieur Merde sequence is a clear development of the director's segment in Tokyo! That doesn't make it any less funny, although this is a comedy clearly aimed at high-brow cinema buffs that can reflect their own disgust with modern films through this anarchic piece. Carax doesn't solve any of the problems he posits, and certainly doesn't save cinema with this work, although some of the more eager critics have suggested such.

★★★

Love or Anarchy: Pure Anarchy

Himizu (Japan)
Director: Sion Sono

Sion Sono's new film has become an annual event as much as Takashi Miike's at Love & Anarchy. The prolific director is always able to comment on Japan's recent events, national psyche and culture in surprising, shocking and innovative ways. After two darker psychological thrillers, Sono returns (in a way) to the twisted teenage romance of Love Exposure with his latest film. It brings a welcome emphasis on his wicked black humor, but overlays the melodrama by the end.

At another village ravaged by natural disasters, this time in shantytown in the seaside Tokyo suburbs, lives the only child of a family disintegrating. The teenaged Yuichi (Shota Sometani) finds he has to support himself since his mother is whoring around, and his father has disappeared since becoming seriously indebted to yakuza. He begins a string of shady businesses and lending out his beach house, but he's having trouble collecting money fast enough for the yakuza still feels he owes them for his father's loans. Back at school, quirky girl Keiko (Fumi Nikado) has grown an obsession on Yuichi, and notices his absence from school. She will stop at no ends in following him around and attempting to help him cope in his ever-growing desperation.

Whereas most American post-apocalyptic (that is to say, post-9/11) films had an uplifting theme of uniting people to cope with their losses, Sono has a lot more cynical outlook on human nature here. He argues that our so-called civilization hangs by a threat and a strong enough catastrophy may bring out desperation that allows violent impulses to take over people. The desperation tears us even further apart from our already disconnected lives. Yuichi becomes tangled in a web of violence, murder and vigilantism.

But Sono does believe in certain goodness in people nevertheless. He is a firm believer on love for redemption of people. In the end, Yuichi can't manage his situation by himself, he realizes he needs Keiko and his foster-father figure Shozo (Tetsu Watanabe). Shozo is the film's most interesting character, a self-claimed former millionaire eccentric, who has lost everything. But his love for his friend Yuichi makes him go behind his back and risk his very life to save him from yakuza. It's really a shame the end half of the film focuses so much on Keiko's and Yuichi's relationship, with Shozo being sidelined.

As I mentioned, the teary-eyed melodrama and weltschmertz of the final scenes of this film fall a bit flat and leave a bad aftertaste in the mouth. Otherwise the film features many of Sono's great strengths - great characters, shocking brutality, surprising story developments, the satirizing of Japanese culture and a pitch black sense of humor. I'm particularly enamored by the scene of literal gallows humor - Keiko's parents building gallows in her room for her to kill herself and spare them from the high cost of her living.

★★★ 1/2

Love or Anarchy: Even though at the surface it may seem like an Anarchy-heavy piece, the heavy melodrama puts it firmly in the Love corner.

Finnish Cult Movies, part I

Today is the Finnish premiere day of the eagerly awaited Finnish science fiction epic, Iron Sky. Although the film didn't really work for me, it has produced enough enthusiastic buzz that I'm convinced we are witnessing either a major break through hit for the film industry in this country, or at the very least, the birth of an international cult hit. But Finland also has a long film history, alongside which many different kinds of films fit, some of which have a cult status among this country, some of which don't yet even though they would deserve it. I for one would love to raise awareness in Finnish cult cinema, so I'll start this series. I had a lot of candidates on which to write about, so rest assured. There's still a lot more to come.

Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning (2005)
Director: Timo Vuorensola

It actually pains me to compare this comedy with some actual movies, but numbers don't lie: 10 million downloads say that currently the most watched Finnish film ever made is this fan-made amateur film. When looked as a movie, it's not very good. But as a home made project it's actually more interesting. The film's special effects are impressive for being made in someone's mom's basement. And like witnessed in Iron Sky on a bigger scale, these tech students from the city of Tampere are some sort of geniuses in selling their unfinished ideas on the Internet and thus raising money, help and extras to help complete the film.

Due to his previous adventures, Captain Pirk of the spaceship C.C.P. Potkustartti (Samuli Torssonen) is stranded in the 21st century with his crew. Times are desperate since he can't even get laid. But Pirk comes up with a plan to invent the tools they need to get back home, and alter history. When they get back, Pirk is the unquestioned Emperor of the Earth. But once Pirk has conquered the planet, he gets greedy and sets his eyes on more. This leads to a war-declaration on the space fleet led by the ship Babylon 13.

As sci-fi nerds can guess, film's plot exists to put together space fights between star ships from Star Trek and Babylon 5. But like the bad parody makers the film's four writers are, they base their creations around original characters and concepts too tightly. For a viewer not familiar with Star Trek: The Next Generation or Babylon 5, the function of characters and settings taken for granted are left in the dark. There's a huge cast of characters, and only Pirk (Samuli Torssonen) and Babylon 13 Captain Sherrypie (Atte Joutsen) get any serious screentime nor arcs. The film would benefit from a better central character besides the all-around hateable and annoying Pirk. And of course, since the film stars mostly amateurs and crew members and their close relatives, the acting is, simply put, atrocious.

There are a couple of chuckle-worthy gags in this film, that mostly involve shooting someone with a ray gun. But I wouldn't recommend sitting through the film just to see those few bits. In fact, I find it nothing short of a miracle that someone outside Finland would find any interest in the film. The film is strictly for the hardcore tech-nerds and sci-fi overdosers.

-

Ruusujen aika (1969)
Director: Risto Jarva

Iron Sky and Star Wreck are not by far the only sci-fi movies ever produced in Finland. And not the best, either. Director Risto Jarva tried his hands on doing a prediction about the future already in the 1960's, and he set his film about 50 years from then, to 2012. The film starts out as a what if-scenario, but turns more and more interesting as it goes along. Jarva was interested in the media philosophies of Marshall McLuhan, and thus made a film that wouldn't look too much out of place in David Cronenberg's filmography.

Unlike many other futuristic films at the time, Jarva pictures the future as democratic. Or at least claiming to be democratic when in fact what you can do measures who you are in the society. Historian and documentary maker Raimo Lappalainen (Arto Tuominen) is at the top of his game. After producing a number of highly acclaimed films about the past, he aims to recreate the history of a time period 50 years before. He figures the bast way to accomplish this is to tell a story of a contemporary individual, and chooses Saara, a young woman who died tragically. He picks the beautiful young athlete Kisse Haavisto (Ritva Vepsä) to play her, and starts to go through her life events with her in real life. The director also develops a relationship with his starlet, which may jeopardize the whole project.

The film has some bitter comments about documentarists who claim to be objective observers of their subjects. Raimo thinks he's almost an invisible force behind his work, but in reality his underlying preconceptions, ideas and emotions drive his work. Because he can't come to terms in admitting this, he also acts coldly and matter-of-factly in his life. In other words, the maker gets tangled in the media for which he's producing content, making him and his film inseparable. Borrowing from Hitchcock's Vertigo, his raising obsessions also make him manipulate and transform his loved one into something he truly desires. In this case it's an idea of the past that never existed in the first place.

The film's technology is decidedly 60's, as is the extended "documentary" sequences showing how world developed to this point. Jarva does acknowledge in his work that films about a different time period are always tied to the concepts of the time it was created. But he still had some very apt ideas about the future, which came to pass, such as the importance of information, telecommunication and hand-held devices. Too bad the free sexuality and steamy swinger ball games haven't also made it to our day.

★★★★

Sensuela (1973)
Director: Teuvo Tulio

Think the concept "Nazis on the moon" makes a weird movie? Or "an archeological dig reveals an evil Santa Claus that starts to kidnap children"? Neither of those movies can hold a candle in weirdness for the swan song of the acclaimed melodrama director Teuvo Tulio. The film spent 10 years in the making and thus forced the director into some pretty creative solutions in attempting to hide the fact. The end result is equal parts a travel advertisement to Finland and a skin flick. It is 100% bonkers and mere words can't even describe how much so. If one film from this post would deserve to break big into the hearts of lovers of camp and cult cinema everywhere, it is this.

During World War II, the German pilot Hans (Mauritz Åkerman) crash lands into Lapland. A group of Sami reindeer herders rescue him from the wreck, and the beautiful Laila (Marianne Mardi) nurses him back to health. During the following weeks, Laila begins to develop a crush to Hans, much to the dismay of his strict, old-fashioned father Aslak (Ossi Elstelä). But since the course of the war turns, Hans must soon flee for his life, leaving his helpers behind. After years and years (though no one seems to get a day older), Hans suddenly returns, now as a successful photographer, and persuades Laila to come with him to Helsinki. They run off together, to the anger of Aslak.

In Helsinki it turns out that Hans is living in a world of decadence. He's having odd orgies where swingers dress up as skeletons and jump around. And some sex is being had as well. The maltreated Laila can't handle such a life, and escapes. She falls to the factory worker Pekka (Ismo Saario), but doesn't tell him anything about Hans. But for one poor choice, this natural child has wrecked her entire life and things soon fall apart like dominoes. Aslak will have his brutal vengeance on the one who betrayed the purest of loves – and it's a scene so odd that the viewer's jaw will surely drop to the floor.

Okay, for a list of things hilarious in this film, let's start with the film's minimal budget. It can be seen from oddly minimalistic sets such as an aeroplane's cockpit that looks like a couple of drapes with a chair and a steering wheel in the front. Or from the use of stuffed animals alongside archive footage in the reindeer-herding scenes. Even more odd is the dubbing, which even in Finnish sounds oddly tacked on. Tulio seemingly shot the film silent and had actors dub in lines years later – and not necessarily even the same actors. Even many sound effects and animal sounds are made by people. The music consists of familiar classical pieces by Tchaikovsky and Sibelius, but never quite fitting on what's going on on screen. This makes in particular the love-making scenes oddly uncomfortable because they have a gloomy, rumbling classical score to them. And boy, there is a lot of sex scenes in this. They rarely show anything below the navel, but women's breasts in particular are shown more often than not. For foreign people admiring the nudity, the film has also a lengthy, and frankly useless, scene set in a sauna.

The film can't decide whether it's set in the 40's, 50's, 60's or 70's, and elements of all decades show in the film. To top the illogical plot, the film's editing sometimes intercuts two things that have nothing to do with each other. Thus, for instance, it seems Aslak is looking worriedly at Laila having sex with Hans when the love-making pair should be in Helsinki and Aslak in Lapland. The dialogue is simply hilarious, stating obvious facts and arising odd reactions no real human being would have. The acting is hilariously over-the-top, particularly Elstelä's constantly raging Aslak.

With all these flaws altogether, the film is oddly psychedelic. Tulio doesn't concern himself on minute detail (or would want to hire assistants who would), he just wants to put colorful visions (that are cheap at the same time) on screen. It is a film about the loss of innocence, but since it seems like it was made by people as innocent as not having any idea of what happens in orgies or bordellos, the message is quite underwhelming.

★ or ★★★★★


Young Love (2001)
Director: Arto Lehkamo

There's been a lot of Teen films made in Finland during the last few decades, and with almost all of them rotten. And this is about a case in point. For the fans of hilariously awful, there's this Romance film, that manages to be fundamentalist christian and perversely voyeuristic at the same time.

The 13-year-old Jukka (Joonas Nordman) moves into a new city with his mother. Mummy dearest is having her hands filled with work while at the school Jukka is called names and bullied. But he discovers his father's old camera and becomes interested in photography. The school's gay communist art teacher(!), Martti (Pekka Lukka) helps him become started, teaching him about zooms. And as a 13-year-old is won't to do, Jukka uses his camera's zoom to spy on a girl through his window. This girl is the late-teenaged Johanna (Saija Lentonen), who likes to strip in front of a window and admire herself from the mirror until her stepfather comes home drunk and beats her. One night, Johanna catches Jukka spying on her, immediately figures out where he lives, and comes to the door to demand for him to stop. But Jukka suggests to her to become a model. As this has been her dream, the duo shake hands and Jukka begins as her manager and trusted photographer. They aim to enter her in a Miss Teen pageant, but Jukka also begins to blossom into love with his partner.

For any viewing experience of Young Love, the making-of feature on the DVD of the movie is an essential addition. That clears up a little of the thick fog surrounding the question: what the hell was the director thinking? On the documentary, Lehkamo seems pleased of having snuck in some of his own messages in his film. This is shown in the scenes where the gay Martti is dying (presumably of AIDS) and renounces his wicked communist-homosexual ways and embraces God. This has little to do with the rest of the plot, as do the lingering shots of the teenaged Lentonen stripping. These scenes are lingered on so lovingly and for such a long time that even the most perverted audience members start to feel uncomfortable. Sadly, these few amazingly awful scenes happen in a movie that's mostly just bland and thoroughly mediocre. Lehkamo clearly has no idea about how teenagers talk, act, or what they do, and also on how to attract them to see his film. A music video-like scene with the band Kemopetrol playing in the end didn't cut the cheese and the film flopped quite badly.

Lehkamo himself went into politics after that but was kicked out from the Christian Democrats party for having way too fundamentalist views on politics. Nordman came a stand up comedian when he grew up.

★★ (★ or ★★★★★ with the making of-documentary)

The Hangover (Baksmälla, 1973)
Director: Jörn Donner

Long before The Wolf Pack was first conceived, Finnish culture multitalent Jörn Donner tangled with an idea that starts out similar. But it turns out to be something different altogether, and Donner uses the cheesy set-up to ponder about the nature of relationships, as well as have some t&a on screen (so the film could be sold as Scandinavian erotica), and to have fun with the film he's making. Donner is one of the finest filmmakers in Finland, which is why it's so strange he has had little respect inside or outside of Finland for his films. He's better known for his books, politics, starting the Finnish film archive and for producing some of his friend Ingmar Bergman's more well-received films.

The director plays Leif, as clear as Donner's own alter-ego as all of the characters he plays. Leif is a used car salesman, who wakes up in a weird house after a night of heavy drinking from which he remembers nothing. But looking at his ring finger he soon finds that he's been married to a woman, Lena (Dianne Kjaer). He then walks around her house, trying to remember. Leif discovers another woman sleeping in another room, and finds out he's already cheated on his new wife with her. Leif trying to stay on top of the situation is intercut with the new married couple talking about their former romantic life and disappointments therein.


Baksmälla (1973) UK TRAILER by klubbsuper8

Donner's film takes a very carnevalistic approach to the subject, and it is very funny. The film is filled with things repeating themselves over and over again, mundane and silly alike. For instance, an aeroplane takes off repeatedly, which has little to do with anything. The film's timeline is skewered and anti-linear. In fact, thanks to this it may be the first arthouse film to be watched while having a massive hangover, when one isn't necessarily the most observing. It's hard to call the film a farce, though. Because of the film's tone, it is all the more surprising when it strikes with surprisingly melancholic pieces on loves lost and unrequited. Leif does attempt to build a spine and a pair during the film if only because he doesn't want to hurt his new wife badly again. Hijinks ensue, and popular comedian-singer Vesa-Matti Loiri has a cameo.

★★★★

Laulu (1986)
Directors: Arto af Hällström, Janne Kuusi

A real cult classic is hard to find, and beloved by those few that have seen it. A reason for this can be that the film is different from anything else and thus quite hard to describe. On top, this film seems to be a documentary about Nightlife in Helsinki, framed by the live performances of the band Sielun veljet. But there are also acted sequences such as the actor Kari Väänänen playing a drunk telling random people his views about the facts of life. And there's an interview with a scientist (named Paavo like my name!) who has utopistic views about the future. In fact, the film represents neorealism, a pseudo-documentary that sums up the artistic feelings in Finland in the 80's. The film was a production by Ryhmäteatteri, a theatrical group looking to break boundaries in the early-to-mid-80s. The result is a true underground film.

It's hard to figure out anything to say about Laulu, because it isn't the sort of film that comes to any conclusions. It raises thoughts, but they come from the person viewing them, the makers are not spoon feeding any ideas. The film objectively just shows a series of various things happening at night time, whether entertaining, cultural, or borderline illegal. Even the off cross-cutting or jumping isn't meant to compare these events, it's just to keep the viewer on his or her toes. The impressions come from within the scenes themselves. The music scenes are sweaty and intimate, or in the case of the scene depicting the humor rock band Lapinlahden linnut, oddly contrasting lowbrow humour with it's rich elitist audience. The film mostly concerns little people and little moments in more poor places. The overall mood is quite gloomy and melancholic. Paavo's future scenarios don't seem all that plausible in a city where drunken people brawl and a taxi ride from the East to downtown doesn't reveal any people but only the dark, rain washed streets. This would be an utopia for only Travis Bickle.

★★★ 1/2

NOOOOOOO!

HIFF - Love & Anarchy Report 2011

Whew! The 24th Helsinki International Film Festival was exhausting for me, with most of my free time having been spent at a movie theatre or waiting to go to a movie theatre. I'm also still recovering from the profound effect the 24 films I saw this year had on me. Now, luckily I already did a post with some of the most notable films of the festival, so I don't have to write 24 reviews. Thing is, 18 is a bit too much too. I'll aim for 14. You can thank me later. I'll include the most notable ones so you can seek them out or nod in agreement.

Opening Film:
The Skin I Live In (La piel que habito, Spain)
Director: Pedro Almodóvar

The spanish director Pedro Almodóvar seems to want to return to his early days judging by his latest film. Not only does it star Antonio Banderas like so many times in the golden years, but the film itself isn't a multi-dimensional drama about humane relationships. Well, not conventionally anyway. Instead we have got the wild and crazy Almodóvar back, the one that had outrageous ideas about the natures of sexuality and no shame in splashing them all across screens.

Banderas plays the brilliant plastic surgeon Robert Ledgard, who has huge ambitions, not all of which are recognized as ethical by his colleagues. He has recently created a sort of indestructible skin by splicing human genes with pig's. Years ago, Ledgard lost his first wife. She burned in a house fire so bad, she preferred to commit suicide rather than look at herself in the mirror. Currently Ledgard lives at his mansion with his housekeeper and his new girlfriend Vera (Elena Anaya), who strangely spends most of her time locked up in a single room. Her face also closely resembles Ledgard's late wife's, and Ledgard uses her as a human guinea pig for his new skin. When Ledgard's no-good long-lost brother Zeca arrives to the house, it triggers a chain of events that will reveal the real deal about the affair and Ledgard's depravity.

This is exactly the sort of film I had been waiting for Almodóvar to make. However, while I had loads of fun with this one, it is actually just an entertaining piece. Almodóvar doesn't actually have much new to say about sex, gender and the ways one can lose both of them. All in all, it is either a strange thriller or a horror movie without big scares. Almodóvar does create the tension and the athmosphere of weirdness well throughout the film. So while it's one of his lesser efforts, it is still well worth watching, particularly if one likes his earlier films.

★★★

Gala Film:
Drive (USA)
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn

Praise has been flowing through doors and windows for this gritty crime drama. Is it worth it all? The answer is yes. Yes it is. Drive is one of the best films of the year, and personally I think it flew straight to my all-time top 10. I actually prefer it to a lot of other pulp fiction crime films it has been compared to, such as To Live And Die In L.A. or Collateral. Like those films, this is also both a love letter to Los Angeles, as well as a depiction of it as the worst nest of corruption, seediness, betrayal, brutality and greed on the planet.

The unnamed Driver (Ryan Gosling) does two jobs. At day he's a stuntman for the film industry, which doesn't really recognize his talents. But at nighttime he's a tough-as-nails getaway car driver, that promises to get criminals out of a jam in five minutes. And does deliver on that promise too, in the film's gorgeous first chase scene. However, in person Driver is a little shy and anti-social. His only friend is his boss and culprit Shannon (Bryan Cranston), and he hangs around in his garage. Shannon does business with some pretty seedy mob guys, such as Nino (Ron Perlman). Driver is a gentleman so he helps out his neighbour Irene (Carey Mulligan) on a shopping trip. He starts to develop a friendship with her and her young son Benicio. Eventually, Irene's husband Standard (Oscar Isaac) is released from prison. He owes a lot of protection money to the mob, and to help the family out, Driver agrees to do a heist job. But one double-cross later he's left with a bag full of money, no idea where to leave it, and a pack of killers on his trail.

Director Refn approaches the film with a no-nonsense attitude like was the standard in the 70's, and with the strong audiovisual sense of the 80's. Both of those choices reflect the film's tone perfectly. The film doesn't have to explain every damn thing thoroughly, and there's not a snippet of dialogue that's not important for the advancement of the plot or to build characters. But where the film excels is the use of violence. It comes by fast, unexpected and brutal. It's not entertaining but feels a little sick. When Driver kills the first people in the film we are actually not rooting for him, but a little scared that the man we've grown to like is capable for such deeds. Indeed, Gosling stone-faced performance really drives the film forward (I'll never apologize for such puns). He's vunerable like a lost child, yet ruthless and determined at the same time. The scorpion on the back of his jacket isn't just for show.

Refn's wonderful choices in music also work like a charm and the film's synteziser score is also one of the year's best. The film is a story of unrequited love and how even a hope for redemption can make an individual drift ever further from it. There are no clean getaways, says the tagline. How rarely are those so spot on for the film in multiple levels.

★★★★★

Festival Favorites:

Play (Sweden)
Director: Ruben Östlund

As the European societies become more and more firmly aligned to the right, immigration is a problem that is widely pondered. It does create a number of problems, but xenophobia and straight-out racism only manage too feed them further. Östlund ponders these problems multi-dimensionally in his film Play. It is based on the real-life events where a group of black immigrant children managed to play with the fears of white-bread suburban children so skillfully that they could rob them of all valuables without resorting to violence or straight-forward threats. In the end, the angry adults go on to blame any dark-skinned immigrant that can be found, even though these culprits are first and foremost bullies that pick on smaller children just because they can. The bullies torment their victims and force them to play an increasing number of humiliating games for them. It is like a more realistic Funny Games that doesn't wipe your face with its message. The film is mostly improvised, but for one that has been grown in the suburbs of a major Northern European City, such as me, the characteristics are familiar and spot-on. Östlund does have a sense of humour about the thing and a wicked sense of irony, portrayed by in-between shots of a cradle being stuck on a train. The film is shot laconically, with the camera barely moving, and much of the action happening just outside the screen. It is a clear message that the issues on hand here are bigger than just the events portrayed in the movie.


★★★★

Guilty of Romance (Koi no tsumi, Japan)
Director: Sion Sono

Sion Sono sure is as fast as he is talented. This is the third movie he's made in the time of two years, and the third to have festival screenings in Finland during one year. But he has to be a bit more careful to not go in the way of Takashi Miike. For while Guilty of Romance is good, it is nowhere near the madcap inventiveness and solid storytelling of Love Exposure.

A group of detectives are investigating a particularly cruel and twisted murder. As the events starts to unfold, we flash back to the beginning. The timid housewife Izumi (Megumi Kagurazaka) is bored to serving her husband all day and not even getting sex as a reward. Thus, she gets a job as a sausage saleswoman. She is spotted by Mitsuko (Makoto Togashi), who is a cunnng and calculating woman that makes her living as a prostitute. She sucks Izumi into living life her way. Izumi first gains a boost of confidence. Yet selling sex is a business that has a dark side beneath any glamour as Izumi will discover.

Sono is as great at unfolding tales of ever increasing cruelty as always. The film's actresses also portray the strain they have to endure really well. Sono's studies about the nature and meaning of sexuality make this more than just the female version of Cold Fish. There is a strong sense of losing traditional values while looking for sexual liberation. Sono aims to shock and has suitable amounts of full frontal nudity, perversions and sick gore to achieve this. GoR also has big amounts of Sono's trademark black humour and many times the film is so comical to be almost a black comedy. The cinametography bathes in neon lights in the dark. But it is all uneven and repeats itself a bit.

★★★

Arrietty (Kari-gurashi no Arietti, Japan)
Director: Hiromasa Yonebayashi

The latest Ghibli film as charming and visually stunning as always. Papa Miyazaki has contributed to the script, which shows in well-rounded character work. A terminally ill boy is sent to his aunt's country home to rest. There, he discovers the excistence of Borrowers, tiny people that live by stealing tiny objects from people. He is especially taken upon Arrietty, the 14-year-old feisty girl borrower that seeks to learn the trade from her father. The Borrowers are a dying breed and during the course of the film they have to ponder whether they can live with people any more. Thus, the film also touches on Miyazaki's basic theses such as the fragile relationship between people and nature and the nostalgic final days of innocence before taking responsibility. The biggest downside of the film is that it actually has a villain that has motivations that are clearly sinister. Is Ghibli going turn to the black-and-white of Disney movies? I really hope not. A toady old she-male prone to catching and collecting tiny people isn't eactly Maleficent, but a Gargamel rip-off is a start...

★★★ 1/2

The Bengali Detective (Great Britain/India)
Director: Philip Cox

This certainly was one of the strangest documentaries in a while. In modern Kolkata (former Calcutta) the police force is quite corrupt and unreliable. That's why the locals turn to private detectives to solve crimes. We follow one of these detective agencies, Always, while they solve crimes. And the crimes vary from selling counterfit products to infidelity cases to tough murder cases. The detectives are a happy bunch. They practice their fighting moves at the park and watch Indian Dance shows on YouTube. The main character is the tubby leader of the agancy, Rajesh Jin. While he has a lot of stress from trying a solve a triple homicide and treating a terminally ill wife, he still manages to keep his sunny side up. That's why he orders all of the detectives to take part in the dance contest with him. And that's not a negotiable term. The film is quite silly, but has really tragic and sad life stories to tell, too. The problem is that director Cox can't quite balance them in the right order. That's why the viewer is confused a lot of time of what he should feel. But nevertheless, the film has a lot of great footage, and most of the time it is a spot-on documentary. Recommended, but with caution.

★★★

This Is Not A Film (In film nist, Iran)
Director: Jafar Panahi

Jafar Panahi is an internationally acclaimed director and a damn skillful one, too. It's too bad he has to live in Iran, where the authorities won't take kindly to any artist who dares to ask questions. That's why Panahi has been sentenced to jail and forbidden from making movies for an absurdly long time. But the anarchist Panahi is, he made a giant Fuck You to the iranian authorities: a film that can hardly be called a film. Panahi wasn't forbidden from acting, so he gave a camera to his friend and started reciting pieces from his upcoming script. Thrilling! We also see him make telephone calls about his situation. Exciting! He also gives us a brief lesson in film directing. The director can't really control everything, and the end result is both a compromise and a collaborative piece to which each part brings something essential. I appreciate the gesture, like Panahi, and won't give out stars because This Is Not A Film. But I will say that the end sequence where Panahi takes an elevator down with his building's garbageman is one of the greatest I've seen in a long time. Like Dante, Panahi ascends to the hell that is Teheran at New Year's Eve. The local people have a bonfire on the street and get their explosions by throwing gasoline into the fire. The accidental metaphor couldn't be more poignant.

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (Di Renjie, China)
Director: Tsui Hark

Director Tsui Hark used to be the go-to guy of chinese epic adventures. He is best known from the Once Upon A Time in China films, as well as A Better Tomorrow III. But something happened in the late 90's that resulted in Hark to produce mostly boring garbage. His latest film proves that his comeback with 2005's Seven Swords wasn't a fluke. In fact, the latest adventure of the classic pulp hero Dee is a lot more fun than that stuffy epic. China is preparing for the crowning of its first female Emperor. The Empress has ordered to build a giant statue of Buddha for the ceremonies. Yet in the construction site, high-ranking officials start to spontaneously combust. The only one that can crack the case is Dee (Andy Lau), a detective and a rebel that's been jailed for life. Dee gets his pardon in order to solve the mystery, which makes him ponder about where his allegiances lie. The semi-mythical adventure takes Dee to weird places, such as underground Beijing and to a temple dedicated to a talking deer god. He must use all his wits and fighting skills to solve the mystery and make it out alive. Treachery is afoot and he can't really trust anyone.

As much fun as all this is, like many modern Chinese films you feel a bit guilty as the message is that resisting the authorities is wrong, and it is noble to take orders from higher-ups. Fortunately the action scenes coreographed by the legendary Sammo Hung are good enough to not ponder on such issues. And the whole thing ends with a truly legendary battle.

★★★ 1/2

Tatsumi (Singapore)
Director: Eric Khoo

Yoshihiro Tatsumi is one of the most beloved manga artists of all time, and a crucial artist in creating the manga for adults, gekiga. His autobiographical graphic novel A Drifting Life is an Eisner-award -winning masterpiece. So it was intriguing that it would, along with some of Tatsuki's greatest short stories be made into an anime film. Alas, the film is little more than motion-comics, those barely animated panels that form a film that's for people that are too lazy to read. Tetsuki's visual style is of course stunning, and the bittersweet tragedies of his wonderful short stories still poignant. But all of it is animated switching between a powerpoint presentation and a cheap flash animation. The short stories are glum and fit the crucial parts in the life story poorly. It is not a whole waste of time, because of the quality of Tatsumi's body of work. But, y'know, I would've rather spent the time reading A Drifting Life. And that's a really bad sign for an adaptation.

★★

Hesher (USA)
Director: Spencer Susser

Every year I try to watch at least one quirky american indie comedy at the festival. Of course their quality varies a lot. I'm happy to report that Hesher kicks ass. A pre-teen kid, T.J. (David Brochu) and his father are living with grandma, trying to cope with the grief of losing the family's mother. T.J. can't deal with school and rather wanders around, going to forbidden places. At a building up for demolition he finds Hesher (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), anarchist, loner and rocker. Hesher starts following T.J. around, even moving in with his family by his own invitation. Although he is seen as a nuisance at first, it turns out that even such a misanthropic character might have a word or two of wisdom behind his crude words. He also teaches T.J. to fight for himself, and that you can't always get what you crave. Of course, a dysfunctional family coming together and a coming-of-age tale aren't the most original of indie film tropes. Luckily Gordon-Levitt's outrageous central character and awesome performance pull the film forward, making it funny and heartdfelt in an equal measure. It also helps that Natalie Portman has a cute bit-part as a cute cashier.

★★★ 1/2

Robot (Endhiran, India)
Director: S. Shankar

At this point the YouTube video of the collected action scenes from the end of this Indian epic action film has become a viral meme. Yet the movie itsef has so much more to offer that I would rather suggest watching the whole thing than to spoil yourself by just eating the sweet, sweet dessert. Endhiran is the most expesive film ever made in the Tamil territories of India (Tollywood), and stars the area's biggest film star, Rajinikanth. He has a dual role as the robot engineer Dr. Vaseegaran, and the super-powered robot Chitti that's his latest, greatest creation. The Doc's girlfriend Sana (Aishwarya Rai) feels neglected, because he is so dedicated to his work. But when she meets Chitti she is smitten and grows to love the robot as company and a protector. Vaseegaran's former tutor, the jealous Dr. Bohra (Danny Denzongpa) is less endeared of the multi-tasking robot, and plans to steal its blueprints to create his own 'bots. That's why he manipulates Chitti's tryouts to get into the Army (!) and the fire departement, claiming that the unfeeling machine can easily kill his friends. Dr. Vaseegaran installs Chitti with emotions, which results in him falling in love with Sana and going rogue.

The three-hour epic is filled with everything you could hope for in a movie: romance, comedy, action (the fights were coreographed by Yuen Woo-ping himself), nutty musical scenes (shot in Sahara and the Machu Picchu, for no apparent reason), and of course robots. Lots, and lots of robots. Altough a lot of money were at play here, director Shankar wasn't afraid one bit to try out different feverish ideas that drop the viewer's jaw to the floor before the uncontrollable cheering and laughing begins. James Cameron should take notice. Rajni in particular is awesome, and perfectly capsulates both a nerdy scientist and a supercool no-nonsense robot. Chitty's billions of abilities and dance moves make Inspector Gadget die in shame. Which is why it's strange that Vaseegaran insists that he is built only for military purposes. There is certainly an Indian nationalistic theme underplaying here. As strange from the viewpoint of a westerner is that apparently it is better to die burning in flames than to appear naked in public in India. In the film are a few dragging parts and a few unnecessary comic sidekicks. But all in all, this was by far the most entertaining film of the festival.

★★★★

In Cold Blood 2 (Yksinteoin kaksi, Finland)
Director: Jussi Parviainen

Jussi Parviainen is an Artist with a capital A. The theatre legend has never been shy about his private life and has always openly incorprated it into his art. I'm one of the select few who have seen the original, uncencored documentary film Yksinteoin (directed by Pekka Lehto) on a big screen. In that film, Parviainen rages to the camera about the break-up of his then-wife, and his worries about losing custody of his children. The result was one of the most harrowing, the most controversial, and the best Finnish films ever made. History tends to repeat itself, and thus Parviainen also had to manage another painful divorce. This time, Parviainen directed the film himself and took on a lot more artistic way of making it.

Parviainen catched his astrologist wife Satu Ruotsalainen cheating on him. Soon after that they divorced. On the interviews of women's magazines Ruotsalainen told that she was happy that the relationship came to an end. According to Parviainen, she also straight-out lied that there was violence in the relationship. In the film, Parviainen splits into two persons, his regular, rational half, and the jealous, ranting, crazy Black Jussi. For the role of Black Jussi, Parviainen gained 47 kilograms and lived half a year in an abandoned mental institution. As you can probably guess, Parviainen is a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic.

Whereas the original Yksinteoin felt like raw, pure burst of anger, regret and pain, the sequel is a bit more tricky. Parviainen adds so many artistic filters into the film, it feels like a product of an over-eager film student at times. This time, the film isn't exactly a documentary, but a fictional film that takes its inspiration from real-life events. It recreates a few of the original film's setpieces. It's actually a wonder that such similar circumstances have happened to Parviainen again. The custody of a small child is again at hand here. Most of the film is reserved for monologues of Black Jussi, that are done straight to the camera. With this Parviainen spits out everything that he feels was wrong with his ex-wife. Amid all the self-pity and the accusal the viewer starts to feel more than a little uneasy of all the dirty laundry made public.   

In advance, Parviainen bragged that this film would end on a better note than its predecessor, and he had a real-life victim of brutal violence in a relationship to tell her story on the film. Annika Sirén plays Parviainen's psychiatrist and has one heart-breaking scene where she tells it how it is. Too bad it fits poorly amids all of Parviainen's misanthropy and self-loathing. There is also a graphich oral sex scene between the leads, but it has been cencored since the film's NSFW trailer. It's probably because the TV network MTV3 has financed the film and perhaps wants to show it at some point (although I can't imagine where it would fit in an over-commercialized channel that mostly broadcasts reality TV). All in all, the film is confusing and more than a little self-centered around Parviainen's own ideas of his grandieur. But still, one can't claim that listening to the Finnish Klaus Kinski rant on front of the camera for 75 minutes isn't captivating to see.

★ or ★★★★★

So, that was this year's set. Thanks a billion times to everyone at Rakkautta & Anarkiaa Ministry. I'm already looking forward to next year! 

Cartoons: Ville Tiihonen